Frustrating.... but well worth it.....

Knowing your audience before you give a talk or presentation is very important. Finding out who they are, what is their educational status, their preferred language will help you to tailor your presentation to suit their level. This is common sense, I could hear someone sniffing! Yes, so common that I totally disregarded it, much to my chagrin. As I was so used of giving talks to English-savvy professionals, I assumed my next audience to be in a similar orbit.

I spent days preparing the materials, refreshing the basics,reading the latest developments on the subject, talking to the specialists,borrowing and pasting photos on the slides and ended up with 46 slides, perfectly done with Window Vista Microsoft power point. I was in the library and at the club ( for its beautiful, tranquail environment, its air-cond and its WiFi) and mostly because I did not want to be distracted had I been at home, whatmore with our unreliable internet connection! Nevertheless, the night before my presentation, I did not sleep a wink due to last minutes slides refinements.

So much for my hardwork ( which by the way I enjoyed doing), and when the day came, I noticed a few minutes into my presentation, all in English, that most of my audience had a blank look on their faces... yes, your guess is right, they could not really understand English.. I then blabbered slowly in the national language (BM), but it was frustrating to have to explain things like "blurry vision", what do you say in BM? " closed-angle glaucoma".... glaucoma sudut tertutup? Didn't sound right to me..wait till I had to explain the mechanisms of structural damage to the eye giving rise to open-angle glaucoma.. malfunctioning trabecular meshwork, say that in BM.....frustrating I can tell you.

Am I not glad I am not a lecturer? Imagine,preparing materials in English then having to translate them into another language! Despite all the misgivings, the exercise has made me more computer and internet-savvy (thanks to my ex IT officers who guided me through mobile phone!) and having been used to getting things done by other people in the past, I now can hold on my own with no sweat. I am pleasantly surprised that a complete presentation can be accomplished by just having a computer and an internet connection. My past ignorance spoke for itself.

Needless to say, most of the technical materials are in English, so I wonder about those who are not conversant with the language, what are their chances of keeping abreast with the latest? How do we stay competitive in this globalised world if we lack K-workers?